


Modern Day Cain

by Noah_Of_Ark



Category: Original Work, biblical retelling - Fandom, classic retelling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Bible, Biblical Reinterpretation, M/M, Read, Rewrite, modern day retelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 02:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15427335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noah_Of_Ark/pseuds/Noah_Of_Ark
Summary: Much like the song by the same name. Not really a fic I imagine to get a lot of attention, it’s just a nice filler fic to write while my main creative attention goes other places. It’s a retelling of Cain, Icarus and Isaac so far. If people read this though I’d be happy to rewrite some more!Icarus is gay for Apollo (who’s human not god as it’s set more modernly) I’m putting this out there right now.Isaac (of biblical fame) is bi and of ambiguous gender identity.Cain is just edgelord mcgee.TW: death and suicide.Please enjoy.





	Modern Day Cain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ricky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ricky/gifts).



He’s a California boy in a small, suffocatingly small, town. It’s pale, it’s drab, he can’t remember the last time he looked up and the sky wasn’t grey. Of course, he still looks up. Every single chance he gets.  
He looks through the window at his coffee coloured desk at school, then the sixth form, then work. He looks when he’s driving, he looks before he goes to bed. Doing the dishes. Just sitting. He’s always trying to look to the sky, as if the pure longing, the love, and desire will take him amongst the clouds like a native. Perhaps the sky graces him, lets him glide through the clouds and set foot on the path of the closest sunbeam. He’d fear one wrong step, one stumble and he’d come undone like a stitch tightly pulled. Falling through the sky.  
He’d turn on his back so he could gaze at the sky once more, and he didn’t think he’d scream or cry. He really thought about it and he couldn’t see an outcome where he wouldn’t be happy. Smiling perhaps. A hand outstretched in case the sun itself gripped his wrist and hauled him back but even if it didn’t, he’d be happy to die. How could he go back to a job, back in the world of growing old, after touching the clouds? How could he ever be satisfied after that?  
So he’d look to the sun and let the ocean kiss his back and drag his hair beneath her. And he’d sleep. Or die. However you’d put it.  
And then his uncle would rib him and wake him up from his thoughts and roll his eyes and ask if he was off in space again.  
He’d nod and say what he’d always say, “better than here.”  
And his uncle would bark a cough of a laugh and say “your heads in the clouds and mines in the core of the earth. What a pair we are.”  
And maybe they’d laugh. Maybe they’d shrug. When Icarus was younger they’d just sit and think, lost in their own worlds; nowadays it was just him. Daedalus no longer dared to dream. He’d become harder in his old age.  
Daedalus was a mechanic at the garage Scraps and Parts, named primarily because of the junk heap in the back. He’d started the place right smack bang in the middle of about three nice corner shops and a takeaway place that was closed indefinitely due to a rats situation. Icarus found that despite this, he rather missed it. They did good kebab.  
The whole town was a village of shops the locals had made, you were lucky to find branded food items and you were certainly in the wrong place if you were looking for fashion that wasn’t made by Ally on Dove Street or didn’t cycle through the thrift store. It was a hole of a place that was once a field and the people here were 50+ or just turning 18/19. You could go to the local pub if you were bored enough, but Herman was usually out. He was also the mailman and he didn’t hide that he read your mail. He’d once admonished Icarus for a late book the school had sent him a letter on, Ike had never got the letter but he returned the book anyways.  
Daedalus used scrap metal from his junk heap from the cars that just couldn’t be fixed or the broken sofas and microwaves people put there and invented incredible things- cameras from materials you wouldn’t believe, toys that had children crowding most of December to make sure they were in the good for Christmas. Music boxes that brought tears to the eye of the elderly and were eagerly sought after.  
But he wouldn’t sell a thing, he only made what he felt like when he felt like for who liked.  
Icarus had once argued with him, that they could be so much richer if he sold his inventions. They could get away, out of town, take an aeroplane and just go…  
But Daedalus had barely started making things again and Icarus understood why his uncle couldn’t come out of his shell enough to start properly.  
He’d had this “boss” once who Daedalus swore was obsessed with gold and had him working long, cruel hours with no break. There was no insurance or benefit. He worked so he could eat and the food was his payment. He hadn’t a penny to his name and the meals he did have were never filling enough.  
His was job was laborious but fairly easy for such a brilliant mind. He’d build the basements that housed the people like him and he’d put hidden doors and faux passageways to stop escapes. If anyone ever escaped he’d be dead in awful gruesome ways his kidnapper (because that’s essentially what he was) would go into detail explaining. He hated himself for the labyrinth he created and the beautiful charms he turned over to the bastards greedy gold laden fingers but he’d had no other choice. His “boss” had his passport.  
It had turned him into a harder man, a fearful man. Years later, in a tiny safe town that was charmed at his broken English at until he’d learned enough to sound fluent- in a tiny town where he made things for children and people he truly trusted he made them machines of silver and copper. He’d come to hate gold.  
His dreams had gotten him captured in a country he sought a new life in. His own wax wings had been forcefully clipped and he couldn’t bear to let Icarus suffer the same with all this head in the clouds nonsense.  
He hadn’t realised that he was continuing a cycle. He meant well, but he was holding the scissors up to the wings of his nephew's dreams and freedom.  
His nephew knew this in part, yet stubbornly refused to give up. Daedalus never wanted him to achieve nothing. He was over the moon when University brochures came through the door. He wanted Ike to have a future but a proper future. A wife and kids, high-end education future.  
Daedalus missed his sister on moments like that. He knew she would have wanted to be there.  
Presently, Ike was sat on the garage floor caressing a grease smothered wrench with a cloth that had seen better days about 20 years ago and missed the good ol’ fashioned cloths the rags of this generation would never know.  
Icarus had been absentmindedly doing this for about a half hour now with no sign of stopping.  
Daedalus wondered if it would improve anything if he bricked up that goddamn window.  
“Working hard, Ike?” Daedalus coughed.  
Ike.  
Only his uncle called him that. A school friend once called him “Icky” and he got into a fistfight to make sure it stopped there and then.  
California boy at heart, with tan muscles even at a young age. He’d always stuck out in these grey towns.  
Clouded over, English, washed out jeans type towns.  
“IKE!” His uncle barked.  
He snapped to attention, his mouth a phantom smile. Canines flashing for just a single lightning strike.  
Women loved him. He’d been so adored by so many but he walked straight past them. It wasn’t that he was snobby or that they weren’t his type or -  
Well, actually they weren’t his type. He didn’t want to date. He’d rather lie on the grass listening to the wind sing to him, he couldn’t imagine any woman making him feel like that.  
His uncle snapped coarse, slightly blackened from an oil smudge, fingers in his face and Icarus got up and did the job he was paid to do.  
Then he went home and pretended he was going to do his homework after a fifteen-minute video that would somehow last til 1:40 am; where he’d finally go to sleep and angrily punch his alarm clock when it dared to ask him to wake up at 5 am.  
(His alarm clock never liked that part. If it was sentient, it might’ve sobbed at him that it was just doing its job, the job Icarus made it do daily. It would have perhaps have had an entire monologue dedicated to the injustice and unfairness of its task. But it was not sentient, and even if it was, Icarus would still probably have just punched it and yelled “NOT NOW”.)  
Then he’d ignore the one he put at 7 am. Then his uncle would come and shake him and he’d hurriedly write something homeworky on the bus (which he took rather than waste money on petrol. His uncle wondered why even had a car), before heading into sixth form. Religiously late but never absent.  
And his day would just be like that. Wake up late, toast stuffed into his mouth, headphones in. Homework on the bus, homework during registration, homework while the teacher went around the room. Class, break, class, lunch, class, class, home. He’d go to the garage. His Uncle would ask how his day went and then, no matter the answer, say “Pah! Teach you nothing in this country”. Then he’d do the whole thing. Again. And again.  
He liked the sky. It might be cloudy but at least the clouds moved. He was just stuck like a broken record, doomed to play the same note til someone stopped him.  
So the universe decided someone would.  
His name was A and that was all anyone knew. Teachers called him A. Registers just said A. It was like there was nothing else.  
But “nothing else” could only be applied to name. He was a whole lot of something else.  
He was tall and thin bordering lanky, had the golden hair and blue eyes thing that Icarus being the exact same hadn’t appreciated until he saw it on someone else. His hair was a bit shaggy but the type of untidy that you put work into. He carried a guitar case on his back wherever he went, even bringing school books out of it. He’d sit outside whenever he could. He was the guy who told the teachers they were wrong on subjects they supposedly majored in and was always right. He was the guy who pushed everyone else away. He was the stupid rebel kid but the wisecracking intelligent one too. He was just a bubble and no one but Icarus seemed to want to get close enough to pop it, share in it. Maybe just bask in it.  
A friend told Icarus that it was a bad idea to even think twice about guys like that. The type that pulls you in.  
“If you think you’re the one to change them and break some walls then chances are you will. But those bricks will hit you in the face because they will always fall on you until the person sorts themselves out”  
That’s what his friend said. That’s what he went home and told Daedelus. His Uncle agreed wholeheartedly with the final sentence:  
“A self-made saint has always been the worst type of sinner and that baggage will mess up anyone who gets close”  
But that night when Icarus was alone in bed looking at the moon (which seemed sullen and just how somehow wrong) he thought about it in big deep breaths and decided he didn’t mind if getting cut on another person's halo so long as the kiss made him forget the bleeding.  
So on thoughts of A kissing him, and then some, he fell asleep with red cheeks. Ready and eager for the morning.

When he arrived at school he saw A smoking at the tree Ike usually lay beneath. Which made it destiny. It was obviously fate.  
He went over.  
And that was about the entirety of his plan. He got there and just...stood.  
“Do you...want one?” A said, his voice soft but deep. Melodical.  
“No no! I don’t smoke. Uncle would kill me. Also, I don’t like the gory pictures on the packet. Which is good really ‘cos that’s like the point”  
A knitted his eyebrows together, his face tilting away. “Oh...kay?”  
Icarus realised he had to drastically save this scenario.  
“I had a fish once”  
Excellent.  
“Fantastic news,” A replied sarcastically.  
“You remind me of it”  
“I remind you of a fish?”  
“NO! Well...yes? Maybe?”  
“Are you aware you just gave me every possible answer to that question?”  
“You like personally aren’t fish-like you don’t...look like my fish but it was a really pretty fish and-”  
“Are you flirting with me?”  
Icarus thought this might be a good moment to just die. He didn’t really know how he could live after this without being in a state of constant cringe.  
There was a pause while A took a long inhale of his cigarette.  
“So I’m a pretty fish, huh?”  
If the ground opened up right now, Ike would jump in.  
“Uhm...yes?”  
“I see,” the boy said smirking.  
He stubbed out the ends of his smoke and turned to look Icarus in the eyes which caused a similar reaction to putting ice in a microwave.  
He melted.  
“I’m going to go to my car and I’m going to go to the beach. It’s about forty minutes away”  
“Okay”  
A shook his head at him. “So you’re welcome to come with if you want”  
Oh. Icarus felt like an idiot.  
“Okay”  
“Really? Forty minutes, most of the day with and then a parting forty minutes with an absolute stranger?”  
Icarus gulped. “Yeah sure”  
A blinked a few times and smiled at Ike in a way he couldn’t fully describe. Sort of an ‘on your head be it’ kind of thing.  
They walked to the car and Icarus text his uncle. Daedalus condoned playing hooky if it was moderate and it’d only happened twice in four years so he was pretty much golden.  
Once in the car, Icarus relaxed a lot. He was still a bumbling idiot but A seemed to find it endearing.  
They kissed on the beach. Then they did some not very PG-friendly things on that beach.  
Then they went home.  
It didn’t take a week for them to be a couple.  
****  
Icarus had stayed up that night like he’d done the past two weeks. He got very little sleep between the end of AS Level exams and work and Apollo.  
A had told him his name and how much he hated it after they’d been going out about two weeks.  
He had learned to love it when Ike whispered it at his throat. He loved it when it sent shivers down Icarus’s spine. He loved the raw power Icarus gave something so simple as a name.  
A light went off in the corner of Icarus’s vision.  
‘Are you awake?’  
Of course he was. He was barely ever asleep. Any time he got the chance to be Apollo would be in his face having a meltdown because he hadn’t replied or Daedalus would be in his face because he was late for his job.  
‘Yeah’  
He text back. His eyes hurt so much.  
‘Don’t be like that’  
Icarus didn’t know what he was being like but he was already writing out his apology. He was so tired.  
They were right about Apollo. Too right.  
Apollo knew when he’d been active online and kept tabs on his location constantly. He’d randomly go through his phone. Had even started an argument because of an email he hadn’t even read properly because when he did he realised that “Joe Brendon” was not some whore Icarus was off cheating with but a headmaster of a university that was thanking him for his application. And then it was a whole new argument about university and obviously, Ike just wanted to break up since he was so desperate to go away.  
‘Nice apology. Be nicer if you meant it. I don’t know why you do this’  
Icarus just wanted to disappear. He had forgotten to look at the sky at the beginning of their relationship just over three months ago. There was no need to. He was on the same ground as his own personal sun.  
But time had passed since then and it just seemed like no one was happy anymore. Icarus was just waiting for the u-turn he’d convinced himself was going to happen.  
‘I want to break up.’  
He couldn’t do this anymore. It was too much.  
‘What the fuck? So I get mad at you because you’re clearly moody with me and you want to break up? When you know how stressed I am right now? Are you actually fucking kidding me? I can’t believe you’re even thinking that’  
‘We’re breaking up’  
‘Don’t you dare fucking say that’  
He didn’t reply. It took a minute for the follow-up text.  
‘You think this fair to do over text? Do you think you can ever do fucking better? Tell me who it is you’ve been cheating with ‘cos I bet you fuckin have’  
‘I haven’t cheated. Stop texting me. Bye’  
He put his phone on do not disturb and he went to sleep. He hadn’t expected it to come so easy.  
When he woke up he had 17 texts, 3 phone calls and according to his uncle, he’d been knocked on 5 times in the last hour.  
He didn’t check the texts.  
He had expected a shit day anyway. Apollo was going to be in his face yelling and screaming and crying all day and he just wanted peace to sleep or look at the sky the way he used. To look and not feel sick or in fear that he had to keep checking his phone so he didn’t get yelled at again. They had good moments, they had nice laughs but it was too much and Icarus wanted out.  
He hadn’t expected his Uncle to spend the morning yelling at him as well.  
Daedalus was unhappy he hadn’t applied for new jobs, was starting to think he hadn’t applied to as many universities as he’d promised and he was very much sick of how tired he was lately which he attributed to him being up on his laptop or him staying up to daydream.  
He yelled for the better part of a half hour. Icarus didn’t open his mouth once which infuriated his uncle more.  
When his Uncle sat down to finally play good cop and do the “I worry about you and you need to start being an adult” speech Icarus finally snapped.  
He screamed about the real reason he was tired and how shit he constantly felt with Apollo. He screamed about how his uncle could back off or help rather than staying silent for months and then unleashing on him. He cried shouting that in three months he felt like not a single person gave a fuck about how he felt about anything.  
And then his uncle hugged him and they cried together.  
There was going to be some changes, his uncle promised. He was going to do better.  
Then Ike went to school to face Apollo.  
He didn’t see him all day, but everyone was looking at him. He found out at lunch that he’d apparently slagged off the majority of the school.  
That was a low hit even for Apollo.  
After school, he went home, chatted with his uncle and got in his car.  
He knew Apollo would be at the beach, their spot. He had to deal with it sooner or later.  
He walked up sand to a small cliff where Apollo smoked by some rocks.  
He didn’t look up when Icarus came close.  
“I’ll change,” he said, still not moving.  
“Good. You’ll make someone out there really happy”  
Icarus sat on the cliff with his legs dangling over the edge.  
“That it then huh?”  
“Yup”  
Apollo came and sat next to him. They didn’t look at each other.  
“That’s shit”  
“You’re taking it better than I thought you would”  
“That’d be because I was halfway to writing you a death threat when I sort of clicked that y’know, maybe that’s why you wanted to leave”  
“I loved you”  
“I know. I’m sorry for fucking this up. We could’ve been really good”  
“Everyone told me not to get close to you. You should never get too close to the sun”  
“I’m the sun now? Boy evolution sure helped me out from my fish days”  
Icarus looked down at the ocean below. It was a small cliff but it would still fuck you up if you fell from it.  
“I shouldn’t be happy about this but at least I’m unique. You’re never gonna forget me”  
“You’re right. You shouldn’t be happy about that. You fucked me up do you know that?”  
“I fucked you up? You ever stopped and thought about who might’ve hurt me?”  
Icarus got a text. His Uncle was buying pizza from out of town. He hoped Ike would like it.  
“No I haven’t,” Icarus said, “but congrats on repeating the cycle”  
“Fuck you” Apollo pushed him on the shoulders. “Seriously, fuck you”  
Icarus got up to leave.  
“Where are you going?”  
“Home”  
“We aren’t finished here”  
“I’m going home”  
In anger, Apollo pushed him.  
Icarus was free-falling longer than he expected so he turned to die how he always wanted. Staring at the sun.  
But Apollo’s long shadow and inconvenient clouds surrounded what he could see of the sky and he died unable to see the sun, staring at the rocks that cut his neck broke most his body.  
And the worst part was that if Apollo had called an ambulance immediately Icarus would have survived.  
Instead, he walked away and called twenty minutes later as an anonymous person who walked past and saw the tragedy.  
Icarus wasn’t alive long enough to that when Apollo’s shadow was gone, he painted in golden sunbeams.  
Daedalus arrived at the scene two hours later when they thought they’d determined who the body was. The sun still highlighted him in all her favourite colours.  
Daedalus hated gold.


End file.
